Mad You Must Be And Delight In It
Mad you must be and delight in it
like mating killdeer in the spring,
lyrical love-making in the epiphanous air
and one flys into the bumper and dies.
Tears flowing down your cheeks
as you drive on into the incomprehensible
horror and silence of the act. And later,
your girlfriend will elaborate the fact
into a beautiful piece of art. Radiance
thrusts a shard of glass through your heart
out of the blue and there you are
with a baffled pain in your eyes
crying on the easel in paint. Poor man.
Mad you must be and delight in it.
Revel in the absurd. Logic, the shakey stool
of a man trying to hang himself.
Quicksand cornerstones sinking into a miasma
of conditioned chaos. What does it prove
that would have made a difference to the outcome?
Nothing to stand on anymore. Even less
to lie down for. Nature a postcard.
A recurring calendar. And one of those months,
a close-up of a killdeer in intimate detail.
Mad you must be and delight in it.
Uproot your hidden harmonies. Give up
your golden chains. Throw the swill
out of your fountains like wine
from the night before. Ignore your dreams
as the phantasmagoria of sacred clowns.
Everything passes in a riot of stars
before you're aware of it. Where are they now?
The aerial ballet of the killdeer. Roadkill.
Random encounters with the irrational.
The clarity cruel. The darkness immense.
Mad you must be and delight in it.
Stare at the wall until something appears.
An orphan of mirrors. An estranged elopement
trying to get away with it all. Throw
the moon down from the tower first
and after it your skull. The hearse awaits
and the horses are plumed with black feathers.
Space is warped. Time's corrupt. And the light
isn't on some kind of goodwill tour.
Over the newly ploughed field,
where are the killdeer that were there
a moment ago, a year, forever, a figment of time?
So beautiful in the way they impressed each other.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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